Abraham Lincoln eBook

It was of essential importance for the development
of Lincoln as a political leader, first for his State,
and later in the contest that became national, that
he should have possessed an understanding, which was
denied to many of the anti-slavery leaders, of the
actual nature, character, and purpose of the men against
whom he was contending. It became of larger importance
when Lincoln was directing from Washington the policy
of the national administration that he should have
a sympathetic knowledge of the problems of the men
of the Border States who with the outbreak of the
War had been placed in a position of exceptional difficulty,
and that he should have secured and retained the confidence
of these men. It seems probable that if the War
President had been a man of Northern birth and Northern
prejudices, if he had been one to whom the wider,
the more patient and sympathetic view of these problems
had been impossible or difficult, the Border States
could not have been saved to the Union. It is
probable that the support given to the cause of the
North by the sixty thousand or seventy thousand loyal
recruits from Missouri, Kentucky, Tennessee, Maryland,
and Virginia, may even have proved the deciding factor
in turning the tide of events. The nation’s
leader for the struggle seems to have been secured
through a process of natural selection as had been
the case a century earlier with Washington. We
may recall that Washington died but ten years before
Lincoln was born; and from the fact that each leader
was at hand when the demand came for his service,
and when without such service the nation might have
been pressed to destruction, we may grasp the hope
that in time of need the nation will always be provided
with the leader who can meet the requirement.

After Lincoln returned from New Orleans, he secured
employment for a time in the grocery or general store
of Gentry, and when he was twenty-two years of age,
he went into business with a partner, some twenty
years older than himself, in carrying on such a store.
He had so impressed himself upon the confidence of
his neighbours that, while he was absolutely without
resources, there was no difficulty in his borrowing
the money required for his share of the capital.
The undertaking did not prove a success. Lincoln
had no business experience and no particular business
capacity, while his partner proved to be untrustworthy.
The partner decamped, leaving Lincoln to close up the
business and to take the responsibility for the joint
indebtedness. It was seventeen years before Lincoln
was able, from his modest earnings as a lawyer, to
clear off this indebtedness. The debt became outlawed
in six years’ time but this could not affect
Lincoln’s sense of the obligation. After
the failure of the business, Lincoln secured work as
county surveyor. In this, he was following the
example of his predecessor Washington, with whose
career as a surveyor the youngster who knew Weems’s
biography by heart, was of course familiar. His
new occupation took him through the county and brought
him into personal relations with a much wider circle
than he had known in the village of New Salem, and
in his case, the personal relation counted for much;
the history shows that no one who knew Lincoln failed
to be attracted by him or to be impressed with the
fullest confidence in the man’s integrity of
purpose and of action.